I am going to ramble a bit today.  I could not come up with a single thing to focus on for a topic today.  I didn’t feel like writing another programming thing, so…I’ll ramble a bit.

 

I’ll start with a little addition to yesterday’s rant.  Which is to say, I’ll rant a bit more about Osama bin Laden’s death, but on a different aspect.

 

Let’s suppose you live in a small, urban area.  No skyscrapers, just average housing and small businesses.  Somebody comes along and erects a building with concrete walls, something very different from surrounding buildings.  Expensive vehicles go in and out and there’s lots of obvious security.  Wouldn’t that make you curious to know who lived there?  Isn’t it likely the local authorities would know, even if they wouldn’t tell anyone?  And yet, this is the crap the Pakistani government is trying to feed us.  They’re saying they didn’t know Osama lived in the lavish, fortified compound American troops found and killed him in.  I call bullshit on that.

 

Beyond that, they’re also upset we came in and killed him.  Not so much because we killed him, but because we didn’t let them we were going to do it.  By my understanding, President Obama told Pakistan and other countries that if we learned where Osama was and he was in their land, we weren’t going to ask for permission.  In short, they were warned this would happen.

 

I applaud the effort on another front:  No civilian casualties, as far as I have heard.  A bombing was apparently discussed but rejected in order to avoid civilian casualties.  Navy Seals were sent in specifically to avoid this, to make sure only Osama and those with him were hurt or killed.  The operation, as near as I can tell, went smoothly, and the Seals hit their target and nothing else.

 

Speaking of large scale responsibility, I want to give some kudos to Sony.  If you’ve not heard, their game networks were hacked, exposing as many as twenty-three million accounts, including twelve-thousand non-U.S. credit card numbers.  This is bad, and Sony has owned up to it.  First they shut down their Playstation network and then they shut down their PC games.  They made no bones about what was happening.  In fact, I received an email this morning from them about it.  They haven’t tried to hide or cover up any part of this as far as I can tell.  Shutting down the games’ networks has got to be costing them a lot of money, but they have done it anyway.  I haven’t been able to play EQ much lately anyway, but even if I were I am glad they are taking difficult steps to deal with an embarrassing intrusion.

 

Making another segue, I wish the TSA would be embarrassed by the video which has gone viral from a former Miss USA about her experience of being groped by TSA security people while traveling.  They’re not the least bit troubled, of course.  The TSA released a statement about how the experience Miss USA went through followed proper procedures and how it was necessary to combat terrorism.  Seriously?  To my knowledge, they haven’t caught a single terrorist.  They have, however, upset a large number of law-abiding legitimate travelers, including a U.S. senator and now a beauty pageant winner among others.  They aren’t protecting anybody.

 

I think the TSA simply needs to cut their procedures way the hell back.  Sure, have the metal detectors; they’ve been there for a long time and while they’re not terribly effective, either, at least they’re not as offensive as some of the other procedures being used to try and give travelers a false sense of security.  Focus on watching people and their behavior.  Put more security on the planes, where the trouble will ultimately occur.  In my opinion, there should be one uniformed and one plainclothes (hidden) security person on every flight.  One or both should be capable of flying the plane.  If trouble happens, the uniformed guy deals with it.  If he fails, the hidden agent takes care of it.  Both have panic buttons so ground control knows immediately there’s a problem.

 

Okay, so I ranted a bit.  I’ll stop now.  Not much more to say, anyway.  See you tomorrow.